An in-depth review of the iPhone 7 Plus’ dual cameras

Are the iPhone 7 Plus’ two cameras better than one?

This year’s iPhone 7 Plus is the first iPhone with dual cameras. One camera has a wide 28mm lens, while the other has a normal 56mm lens, and toggling between the two gives you a 2x optical zoom (here’s our overall review of the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus).

Besides getting true optical zoom on a smartphone camera, Apple is also packing some digital wizardry in the form of Portrait Mode, which generates background blur akin to the bokeh you get from fast, prime lenses (more on that below).

So, is having two better than one, and are those two better than the one that came before them? To find out, I took the iPhone 7 Plus, the iPhone 6s Plus and the Samsung Galaxy S7 out for a camera comparison.

Before we go on with this review … 

Here are some testing notes. Feel free to skip.

The iPhone 7 Plus’ big camera feature is not available yet

Portrait Mode, where the iPhone 7 Plus digitally applies an out-of-focus blur in the background, isn’t available yet. It is available if you’re running the iOS 10.1 beta. We’ll update this review when it drops for everyone. 

It’s the Samsung Galaxy S7 instead of the S7 Edge this time

Unlike the previous Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge versus iPhone 6s Plus comparison, I’m using the S7 this time. The S7 and S7 Edge have identical Sony sensors, so their test results should be similar — except when they come with Samsung’s ISOCELL sensors. Our S7 is running the Sony sensor.

Apple calls the 56mm lens a ‘telephoto,’ so that’s what I’ll call it too

Photographers would call a 56mm lens a ‘normal’ lens, or a lens that more closely approximates how the human eye sees. But Apple calls the 56mm a ‘telephoto,’ probably to emphasize that it’s a 2x optical zoom from the 28mm lens, and for consistency’s sake, that’s what I’ll call it in this review.

I’m sorry, Adobe Lightroom Mobile ate (almost) all my DNG files

iOS 10 gives iPhone photographers the ability to save in raw (specifically, in DNG) for the first time. But you can’t do it in Apple’s Camera app, you need to use a third-party app that supports it.

I wanted to do a comparison between the iPhone 7 Plus’ JPEG and DNG files, so I used Adobe Lightroom Mobile to shoot in raw. I shot nearly 500 images using the iPhone 7 Plus, many of which had a raw double.

Unfortunately, I lost all my raw images when trying to sync Lightroom Mobile to Lightroom on the desktop. The whole sordid account of what happened is on Adobe’s support forum. Nearly two weeks after posting, an Adobe representative contacted me with links to download my recovered files, but they could only get 101 of my images back.

TL;DR; I wouldn’t recommend Adobe Lightroom Mobile if you want to shoot in raw on iOS 10. For one, it’s far too easy to delete your entire portfolio*, and for another, it’s too difficult to get your raw files off the iPhone (you can only do it through Adobe Creative Cloud). And sorry for the minimal raw comparisons in this review.

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*When I deleted a mass of my photos off Flickr the other day, the site asked me twice whether or not I really meant to delete so many images. In comparison, this is how Adobe asks you if you want to nuke every image you have:

I can possibly infer that syncing will delete existing photos on the cloud, but nowhere in this message does it make clear that Lightroom Mobile will also claw into your iPhone and delete every single DNG from your local storage. I love you, Lightroom, but not on my phone.

The Samsung Galaxy S7 still has the better UI

When it comes to user interface (UI), the Samsung Galaxy S7 still has the upper hand. Apple’s Camera UI remains largely changed in iOS 10. The only new feature is the ‘2x’ icon on the iPhone 7 Plus, which switches between the 28mm and 56mm cameras on the back. 

While Apple’s Camera app is easy to use for most people, it leaves power users in the lurch. iOS 10 lets you shoot and save in raw (on the iPhone 6s/6s Plus and up), but the option is actually absent from the Camera app. You’ll need to hunt for, download and use a third-party camera app which supports raw to shoot and save in DNG.

You can shoot and save in raw directly within the S7’s Camera app, no third-party apps needed.

And it’s not just about power users either. I found the S7 better at automatically detecting when to shoot in HDR; I’d often have to manually turn on HDR mode on the 7 Plus. The S7’s dual pixel auto-focus is also faster and more accurate, especially in low-light, where the new 7 Plus still struggles.

The iPhone 7 Plus’ camera is slightly better in good light

The iPhone 7 Plus’ cameras are slightly better than the iPhone 6s Plus in good light. There are more details in each shot, but still not at the same level of clarity as the Samsung Galaxy S7. The iPhone 7 Plus’ raw files also have less detail than the S7, and more color noise. It looks like the iPhone 7 Plus applies a liberal dose of noise reduction in JPEGs, which gets rid of the color noise but also fine details. This holds true for both the 28mm and the 56mm cameras.

Besides shooting outdoors, we also shot our resolution chart in raw (both the 7 Plus and the S7 save to DNG). The S7’s images have more detail than the 7 Plus, and the 7 Plus’ 28mm raw images have more color noise. When shooting in JPEG, the 7 Plus loses that color noise but at the loss of fine details. Outlines also gain a slight jitteriness that’s not in the raw. The S7 JPEGs retain more image detail, but in extremely fine areas slight artifacts can be seen, which look like an after-effect of over-sharpening.

The iPhone 7 Plus’ new 56mm camera performs like the 28mm

The iPhone 7 Plus’ 56mm camera has three disadvantages when compared to the 28mm; it has a smaller sensor, it has a slower aperture at f/2.8 compared to f/1.8, and it doesn’t have optical image stabilization (OIS).

But the 56mm camera (usually) returns the same results as the 28mm when shooting in good light. In good light, the amount of detail looks to be the same, and that could be a result of what Apple calls “Fusion.” According to TechCrunch’s Matt Panzarino, the iPhone 7 Plus takes images using both cameras every time, and merges the two photos into one for the best possible image. 

The exception is in middling light, such as when shooting our resolution chart indoors. In the sample below, the 56mm lens was forced to shoot at a higher ISO setting of ISO 400 compared to ISO 100 on the 28mm, likely to compensate for the slower lens, and you can see significantly more image noise as a result.

However, and this is something I go into more on the next page, the iPhone 7 Plus does a bit of trickery behind the scenes. It won’t always listen to you when it tells you to shoot using the 56mm lens, instead, it’ll decide when either camera has shot the better image and saves that instead.

The iPhone 7 Plus will usually do that in low light, and when shooting macro in good or low light. That might be because the 28mm has a shorter focusing distance, and thus is able to actually get closer to the subject and be in focus.

This also means that when the iPhone 7 Plus swaps out a 56mm image for one shot with the 28mm, you’re essentially getting a digital 2x crop that’s blown up to 12MP. It’s a softer image with even less fine detail than if you’d originally shot in 56mm. You might not notice the loss in quality if the only time you look at your images is online or on the phone, but it might come as a rude shock if you ever print your photos.

The iPhone 7 Plus captures in wide color, but it’s not just about capture, it’s also about treatment

A key new feature on the 7 Plus’ cameras is their ability to save JPEGs in wide color, which is Apple’s name for the DCI-P3 color space. DCI-P3 contains more colors than the previous sRGB color space, but you’ll need a display which supports wide color to tell the difference. The 7 Plus’ display does, as do the iPad Pros, and Apple’s newest Macs (here’s a test to see if your screen can display wide color).

As for myself, I couldn’t tell the difference. Even when viewing 6s Plus, 7 Plus and S7 images side by side on an iPad Pro, I still sometimes picked the S7 images for better color. Thinking I might be going color blind, I asked my art director to pick and choose which images with colors he preferred, and it ended up the same: He sometimes picked the 7 Plus’ photo, and sometimes the S7’s.

The iPhone 7 Plus’ camera is still as muddy in low light

Low light was a low point for the iPhone 6s Plus’ camera, and I wished the iPhone 7 Plus does better. But in the darkness, it mostly repeats the same sins.

The 7 Plus manages to capture images with more detail in low light than the 6s Plus, but the Samsung Galaxy S7 still takes photos with the most detail in low light. The S7 delivers truer colors, while the 7 Plus’ colors tend to wash out. And the 7 Plus still takes photos at dangerously low shutter speeds. It’s a credit to Apple’s excellent optical image stabilization (OIS) technology that images still turn out sharp, but the margin for error is slim, and if your subjects move, the shot will be blurry anyway.

In the following example, the S7’s shot captures the gold pedestal in low light most accurately. In the shots from the 6s Plus and the 7 Plus, the gold has lust its luster.

In this high ISO images, the 7 Plus, at ISO 1,000, has subdued the red colors, softened the image and reduced the symbols within the round pegs to a flat circle. The S7’s photo, at ISO 1,600, has more image noise, but it manages to retain the vivid red exterior and has sharper outlines.

The iPhone 7 Plus is sneakily swapping images without you knowing

This is something I touched on in the previous page. I was confused why the images taken with the 56mm camera in low light looked much softer than their 28mm counterpart, until I checked the EXIF data.

It turns out that in low light (and even in good light, especially for macro), the 7 Plus will disregard your command to shoot with the 56mm camera, and instead use a picture taken with the 28mm camera, crop it, enlarge that crop to 12MP, and present that to you as the 2x image.

The 7 Plus is probably doing that to minimize camera shake in low light and keep the ISO low. That’s because, unlike the 28mm camera, the 56mm camera doesn’t have optical image stabilization. Compared to the 28mm f/1.8 lens, the 56mm f/2.8 lens is slower, and would thus it would need to either increase the shutter speed or the ISO, both of which seem to be anathema to Apple.

Automatically swapping out a shaky and noisy image for a stable and smoother one, albeit one with fewer details, is a smart move for most users, who might not even notice the difference. But it’s infuriating for others (like myself), who expect a camera to do what it says it’s doing, not substitute a shot in the background without my knowledge.

The iPhone 7 Plus takes better panoramas (that could be even better)

The iPhone 7 Plus still takes better horizontal panoramas than the Samsung Galaxy S7. There are almost zero artifacts and tears at the seams, even with moving and complex subjects. They sometimes appear, but rarely, while ghosting and tears appear easily in the S7’s horizontal panoramas.

The iPhone 7 Plus, however, takes all that wonderful performance and then proceeds to throw image quality away. When you look closely at the panoramas, there should be more image detail and wider tonality than there is. Looking at the file info, it looks like the 7 Plus is heavily compressing JPEGs to minimize file size, which might explain the loss in image quality. A 9,068 x 3,864 panorama JPEG from the 7 Plus weighs in at ‘only’ 12.5MB, while an 8,544 x 3,888 panorama JPEG from the S7 clocks in at a large 47.4MB.

Again, it seems that Apple is adapting its cameras’ features to suit most people, with an acceptable medium file size but lower quality, while Samsung has a large file but higher quality. Still, it strikes me that too much appears to be lost with Apple’s aggressive compression, and they can afford to loosen up a bit and go for a bigger file with more quality.

Oh, and all this applies only to the 7 Plus and the S7’s horizontal panoramas. Both their vertical panoramas are awful, with ghosting and tearing aplenty.

The iPhone 7 Plus’ HDR is okay

Apple’s iPhones have always struggled with HDR. The 7 Plus is not as smart as the Samsung Galaxy S7 at recognizing when to shoot in HDR, and I had to manually turn it on when facing high contrast lighting. For example, in this shot below, I was surprised when the 7 Plus didn’t automatically turn on HDR mode, as the highlights are obviously being blown out.

With HDR manually turned on. The highlight still looks hot to me, but my histogram assures me that there are no blown highlights.

The 7 Plus still struggles with difficult scenes. Here, the iPhone 7 Plus expertly kept the white highlights on the flowers, while boosting some of the shadows, and tried to retain the background but failed.

The S7 doesn’t fare much better. While it does okay with boosting shadow detail, it tends to let more highlights go. Neither of the three smartphones are particularly impressive when it comes to HDR, but the iPhone 7 Plus does slightly better.

The iPhone 7 Plus still takes better videos

The Samsung Galaxy S7’s video recording has a few good strengths. It manages auto-exposure better than the iPhone 7 Plus, adjusting for brightness between different lighting situations. It’s able to focus faster and better in the dark than the 7 Plus, with less image noise. When shooting in good light, image detail, as well as colors look just as vibrant in videos from the S7 as from the 7 Plus.

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Unfortunately, the S7’s fatal flaws remain: Obvious rolling shutter and lack of optical image stabilization (OIS). If you pan or move the S7 too quickly, videos wobble and shake like jelly. OIS is available when shooting Full-HD on both the S7 and the 7 Plus, but only available in 4K video on the 7 Plus. And these two strikes on image quality are enough to give the 7 Plus the lead in video.

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The 7 Plus, like the 6s Plus, manage to avoid rolling shutter and deliver impressively smooth video with OIS. You can also zoom in and out while shooting video by tapping the ‘2x’ icon, but because the lens info isn’t embedded in the EXIF, I can’t tell if you actually are shooting with the 56mm when zooming or if it’s a cropped and enlarged image from the 28mm. Looking at how steady some 2x videos are, however, I have to suspect that the 7 Plus may default to the 28mm camera with OIS, when shooting videos that require stabilization.

Is the iPhone 7 Plus a better camera?

More than 1,300 photos shot and eight pages of exposition later, is the iPhone 7 Plus a better camera than the iPhone 6s Plus and the Samsung Galaxy S7?

Here’s the short answer: The S7 has a better UI with far better auto-focus, and shoots better stills in good and low light than the 7 Plus. However, the 7 Plus is better at horizontal panoramas and videos than the S7. The 7 Plus shoots better stills than the 6s Plus, but with less detail than the S7, and colors still tend to wash out in low light. So while I’d pick the Samsung Galaxy S7 for better stills, the 7 Plus is a better all-rounder for both stills and videos.

So, unless you shoot a lot of video, you’re going to love shooting with the Samsung Galaxy S7 for still images. If you want something that does both stills and images well, you’re better off packing the iPhone 7 Plus. 

But wait. There is one more thing.

It’s just more fun to shoot with the 7 Plus

While I’m disappointed that the 7 Plus’ image quality is only one step and not one level better than the 6s Plus’, the shooting experience with the 7 Plus is far better. Because of the 2x zoom, I could get shots I’d normally have missed. While 56mm isn’t really a telephoto/zoom lens, the ability to get 2x optical zoom on a smartphone opens up twice the shooting possibilities as before.

So here’s how this review ends: grudgingly. I wish Apple would have shipped the 7 Plus with better image quality, with details in good and low light to match or better the Galaxy S7’s. Perhaps it could have shipped the 7 Plus with a single, but improved camera, with a larger sensor for fuller details and less image noise.

But I have to admit that the decision to have 2x zoom is, for most people, the better option. I don’t agree with sneakily swopping digitally enlarged 28mm crops with real 56mm shots, but most likely won’t notice anyway.  And 2x is a fun enough option that I’m considering switching to the bigger Plus iPhone, even though I’ve hated the larger size in the past (my colleague did too, but he’s already switched for the sake of the dual cameras).

It turns out that yes, two is better than one, at least when it comes to the dual cameras on the iPhone 7 Plus.